Royal iQ any good? - chat notification?

Pretty much as the thread says, trying to work out if this is worth the $100 for our group (GASP).

Does the Royal iQ have chat notification? Seems some of the other cruise lines apps don't have chat notifications for when the device is in standby, so you need to keeping into the app and checking for new messages etc. Not great, so people end up missing messages for hours and hours, or so the reviews say.

Also says unlimited calling to anyone onboard who has a Royal iQ communication package. So that could be handy. I guess as above really, does the other person device ring if not being used. ie sitting on the table.

Any other general thoughts? Its a lot of cash to splash, but on a large ship, I think it could be worth it.

If you have an iPhone then iMessage works over the ships RoyalWifi without paying the $7.95 for chat. We used this over the weekend on Ovation, though doesn't help if you have an Android phone. I am still wondering how long this will last or whether RCI already knows but cannot block it without breaking their own messaging app.

Thanks for the reply, I had read about imessage working over the wifi without paying for anything. It seems to be pretty public 'feature', so I'm sure RCI is aware of it. But as you said, how long it lasts, is another thing.

Sadly the bulk of our group is android users. So not an option for us.

It's looking to be the paid chat for us, some say there are notifications as long as you don't close the app in the background, but its flaky or was a year ago.

Also reading no 'group' chat in the RiQ app. Only one to one chat. Which makes arranging group events interesting, to say the least in our group of 10 people, if this is still the case.

I'm finding a general lack of information on this app, which is disappointing. So I guess I'll make a video or a post after the cruise in Nov and report the findings.

I was really hoping someone had some info. We might just enable it on a couple of accounts and test it out before we spend $100 on a useless chat feature that should be free in the first place!

Not mega dollars, but if it doesn't work, its wasted money!

I did actually use it in January on the Ovation as I have an Android and my wife has an iPhone. If the app had been opened and then you switch to another app (but the RoyaliQ app was still running in the background) then yes, we would get notifications of messages or incoming calls. We found that receiving messages was pretty reliable but calls not so much. The biggest issue I had with it was that as you moved around the ship you would lose connection to the wifi hotspots and they would not always reconnect. So I often had to reconnect to the wifi, this seemed to be more of an issue with my Samsung Galaxy as my wife's iPhone was better at reconnecting. The app is not perfect and may frustrate the less patient people but it sure helps keep in touch when you need to find someone.

Also, I don't recall any group chat feature either but I did not look to hard.